


leave your doubt at the door

by friendly_ficus



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Light Angst, fallinel is ridiculous, politics and magic and murder oh my, seven immortal dancers is no basis for a system of government, spelling is really a matter of opinion, why talk about your problems when you can repress them instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22315963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: On the twenty-fifth day of the thirty-six-hundredth cycle since Fallinel’s last worldly leader was killed in glorious combat, Aelwen Abernant decrees that while she would not presume to trespass on the holy workings of Fallinel government, she is proud to accept her appointment and guard her people through their time of crisis. When the cloak of amber beads and the wisdom of the ages is clasped around her shoulders, she keeps a grave expression. When the ceremonial sword which struck a thousand dissidents is placed in her open hands she keeps her composure, even as it slices into her palms. When the chain of office, crafted from a metal found nowhere but on the elemental plane of air and refined for fifteen-hundred years before its forging process can begin, settles against her chest—well, then she smiles.(Kyr presents a problem; Aelwen extrapolates.)
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Aelwen Abernant
Comments: 7
Kudos: 57





	leave your doubt at the door

**Author's Note:**

> aelwen steals a country for a song. sort of redemption arc sort of not? idk. morally questionable things for The Right Reasons

“Did you like her more, then?” Aelwen sneers, voice dripping with disdain. “Was she weaker, this other me, did she cringe and cry and  _ beg  _ your forgiveness?” 

“I care for you,” Adaine says. Aelwen doesn’t have to look to know her sister’s hands are shaking. “I care for you, I want you to get well. And I’m  _ sorry  _ for what they’ve done to you—”

“Don’t you pity me, Adaine, don’t you dare.” She reaches for a spell to punctuate her anger and finds only the barest traces of magic available. When she tries to shape them the ache is immediate and intense, deeper than her bones.

Adaine, the awful, earnest look on her face, leans forward. It looks like she wants to do something absurd like take Aelwen’s hand. Ridiculous—since when have they ever been that kind of family. To avoid it Aelwen rises swiftly from the water, ignoring the pain in her legs and her spine and how cold she feels despite the warm air of the hot springs around them. 

“Oh for the love of—sit  _ down,  _ you’re in a state right now. Don’t hurt yourself to prove some kind of point,” Adaine says. “Who’s around for you to show off to right now, the healers?”

Aelwen scoffs. “Being strong isn’t  _ showing off,  _ sister, just because you don’t know how to do it—”

“I’m plenty strong, thank you  _ very  _ much—”

“And yet you were captured, weren’t you?”

_ “So were you!  _ You were in that tower  _ with me!”  _

Breaking Adaine’s composure doesn’t feel like a victory. Aelwen doesn’t feel like much of anything, actually, besides exhausted. She sways and hates herself for doing it, hates how Adaine catches her arm and guides her carefully to a chair, hates how her sister takes a comb from one of the healers and begins running it through her hair. 

“Kalvaxus is dead,” Adaine says after a while. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

It’s very quiet now, nothing but the faint sounds of water moving and the  _ swish  _ of the comb through Aelwen’s hair. The healers have left without her noticing and it’s just the two of them in the space. 

“I remember. They told me about it, I think, before... well, before I decided to preserve myself.” Aelwen tries not to think about laying on the pallet in her cell, working the spell so deeply into her mind that only her sister would stand a chance of finding it. A failsafe she’d hoped would go unneeded.

“Anguin is dead too, I think,” and the comb is torn from Adaine’s grasp as Aelwen whips her head around to stare. Adaine looks older, her hair is shorter than it used to be and there’s a determined set to her brow that’s never been there before. She does not look sorry.

“Do you want to stay here for a while?” Adaine asks before she can formulate a response to  _ that  _ little bombshell. “Tel'amine said you could recover on his lands. You should be safe.”

_ I know nothing of this place beyond these hot springs,  _ Aelwen thinks. “Yes.”

Her sister nods and begins moving towards the doorway, presumably to deliver the news. Aelwen pulls the comb out of her hair and turns it over in her hands, sees the calluses she has no memory of forming. Adaine moves with something she’s never once displayed, except at the side of the squad car: confidence. There’s a waver in the air around her, light reflecting strangely on her shoulders. It must be some sort of shield spell. Aelwen’s always had an eye for abjuration.

“What are you doing now?” Aelwen asks when she’s nearly gone, “Where are  _ you  _ going to be safe?” It’s meant to be derisive but it just comes out... tired. 

“I’m hunting the Nightmare King,” Adaine replies, eyes sharp and voice steady. “And we’re going to kill him, too.”

She does not wait for a response, which is fortunate, because Aelwen can’t think of anything to say to that.

\---

Adaine left a few hours later in the front seat of a van, her friends packed in around her. Aelwen had watched from a window as Seacaster had a heartfelt farewell with his grandfather and another jock from Aguefort ducked down in his seat to avoid the searching gaze of one of the elven teens. She had watched and considered her situation, settled in a cushioned window nook. Right before the van moved out of range she had flicked out a finger, the cantrip working even if few other spells were.

“Don’t die,” she had ordered her sister. “It’d be weak, for the prison to be gone and you to die anyway.”

_ I won’t,  _ Adaine’s voice whispered in her ear.  _ Get well. _

Now, across the table from Tel'amine who is contemplating his grandson’s departure while eating a frankly absurd salad that appears to be made of dreams, Aelwen contemplates different kinds of prisons. She doesn’t ask  _ will you release me if I ask  _ or something equally obvious, but she can’t exactly leave his protection without presumably being arrested again. And where would she go, too weak to manage more than a first-level spell before passing out. (She’d tested it, up in the window seat. It’s valuable to know one’s limits.) And what would she even do, look for mother and swear herself to another cause that she’ll only fail? No, there can be none of that.

Between mournful sighs and shining single tears, Tel'amine begins to speak to her. “Your sister is the Oracle, is she not?” At Aelwen’s nod, he continues, “A terrible thing, to hinder the Oracle in her work as our fellows have done. With the destruction of the Ka’lethriel Tower, which stood as a monument for an age, preserving a moment and a memory in stone and crystal—”

_ Get on with it,  _ Aelwen wants to hiss.

“Ah, as I was saying, they should not trouble her for some time. It would be unfortunate for the country of Fallinel to lose our Oracle again and have to seek out the next chosen.”

“How long,” Aelwen asks to distract him from the way she’s tucking away her dinner knife, just in case, “is ‘some time’?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you mean a month? Six weeks? A year?”

He looks at her, serene and unconcerned. “Oh, who could say. Time is so long, you know, and though we may contemplate the life of a single flower—”

Aelwen stands, a healer at her side rising as well. “Take me to my room,” she says, and they both walk carefully from the dining hall as the old elf rhapsodizes on dandelions or whatever the fuck he’s talking about.

Lying in sheets artfully smithed years ago, Aelwen struggles to sleep. Her limbs are heavy and the bed is comfortable, but something from the earlier conversation sticks in her mind like a burr. She isn’t  _ worried  _ about Adaine, off alone with her collection of little strays. Surely not. 

Surely not.

Adaine’s hunting the Nightmare King, and they’ll have no interest in disrupting that search. They’ve just lost some historical monument and Fallinel elves never  _ rebuild,  _ she remembers mother saying, they only restore. Restoration will take much longer, probably. And yet... and yet they’d had Adaine in the tower already, even though she was on her little quest. And there’s no reason for them to restore an old prison to return her sister to, not when there’s a whole country of valuable old buildings. Adaine isn’t  _ nearly  _ powerful enough to destroy all of them.

_ Why does it matter what they do to her,  _ Aelwen thinks, rolling over to reshape her pillow. But she thinks of Adaine’s determination and the tremble in her voice, saying  _ I care for you.  _

_ Anguin is dead too,  _ her sister had said. What does that mean, that father is no longer around to disapprove of Adaine? She’d grown that strong in a few months away from him, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t stop now. She’d continue on this bold, obvious,  _ loud  _ path because she never did anything the clever way until it was nearly too late.

The thoughts turn over and over in her mind until she slips into a trance, an unusual amount of relief accompanying the rest.

\---

There is a scar in the sky where the sun should be. It’s risen in a strange arc, casts odd shadows over the gardens on Tel'amine’s lands. A little off-kilter. 

Aelwen ignores any similarities to her own situation, finding her way to the library and cracking open a tome. She reviews the basics of spellcasting as she eats melon grown from sorrow, practices glyphs as her healer hums six tones to promote rejuvenation of the body, casts little shields and wards while youths frolic and sing and eat grapes in the various courtyards.

She eats dinner with the rest of the elves only because they won’t deliver it up to the library like they will with the rest of her meals. She trances in sheets that feel like cream. Because she doesn’t sleep, she doesn’t dream. Sometimes the healers force her to go through slow stretches and exercises or take brief walks outside, something about muscle strength and the healing properties of Fallinel air. A few days pass in this manner.

It sort of makes sense now, that the high elves have no real sense of time. Each day is the same, tranquil and full of faint music. It’s irritating. Aelwen begins marking them down in a notebook, with notes of the things she’s accomplished or researched at any given time. It’s not a journal, it’s  _ research notes.  _ There are glyphs in the margins and everything.

Three days later, in the middle of messing up  _ another  _ series of runes due to shaky hands, an illusory screen unrolls in the air in front of her. And there’s Adaine, dark circles under her eyes, a little dried blood down the side of her face. It’s an interesting bit of spellwork, actually.

“Well  _ you  _ certainly aren’t taking care of yourself,” she offers, when her sister doesn’t speak up.

Adaine blinks, frowning. “Hi, how are you, I’m alive, thanks for asking.”

“Did you copy a list of conversation conventions from a book?” Aelwen laughs. It’s a mean laugh, but Adaine’s flinch doesn’t feel like a reward. 

Adaine recovers, sighs. “I just wanted to check in on you.”

“How are you doing that, by the way?” Aelwen’s fingers are itching for a pen but she picks up a stupid quill made of moonbeams, it’s all that’s around. She starts making notes on the dimensions and qualities of the spell absently, the way she has been for every spell she can find the last few days.

“Hm? Oh, I had Aguefort teach me this spell. It’s a modification on Sending.” Adaine just keeps  _ looking  _ at her.

“What do you need, then.” Aelwen’s only up to third-level spells again, and only three of them before she wakes up face down with her notes stuck to her face. 

“Can’t I just worry about you?”

“No,” Aelwen says, and dispels the magic.

Adaine calls again the next day. They’re not speaking, they’re not civil with each other, they’re  _ not that kind of family,  _ except. Well, except.

\---

The problem is Kyr, at first. 

Aelwen is making notes on a tree at the edge of Tel'amine’s domain when Adaine’s call comes through. It’s the longest walk she’s taken in the time she’s been in this place, and her healer will fuss about  _ pushing yourself  _ again, will say  _ you have time, Aelwen, why go so quickly,  _ will say  _ why do you never tell me where you’re going, what if you need help  _ when she returns. Some of the leaves are beginning to brown at the edges, and Aelwen’s using up the last of the strange daylight to observe them more closely. There are no predators to bother her in these woods, and even if there were... well, she’s up to two fourth-levels if she really needs them.

The problem is Kyr because Adaine mentions, between an inane bit of relationship drama and an interesting ward she encountered that, “I never knew how irritating seers would be, I  _ know  _ I’ve seen Kyr a few places now. She keeps finding us.”

Aelwen stops making calculations about the rate the leaves are browning. She doesn’t remember Kyr, not really, but there’s something percolating in the back of her mind. Something about Tel'amine lamenting the search for a new Oracle, about the abjuration shield on Adaine’s shoulders in the hot springs, about how nobody can tell her how long the ‘some time’ that Adaine should be free of Fallinel interference actually is. Not that she’s been asking about that, or anything.

Prepping a dispel, she lets Adaine ramble on a bit more before cutting in. “You need to live, do you understand? Adaine, you need to live or all these fucking elves win and get a new Oracle because you’re dead. Have you considered how  _ insufferable  _ that would be?”

“Aw, you’re worried about me,” Adaine says, smug. Her sing-song cadence is undercut by the sincere surprise in her eyes, and Aelwen’s sister really needs to learn to hide her feelings better.

“Fuck you.” Aelwen cuts the connection.

Still, Kyr is a problem. Aelwen considers what to do about it as she walks back to the dining hall and listens with half an ear to her healer’s grumbling. 

_ I care for you,  _ Adaine had said, and she keeps calling. She’s the only source of clever conversation Aelwen gets these days, since she doesn’t go on about  _ muscle atrophy _ or  _ poor nutrition _ or  _ the reflection in a single drop of morning dew.  _ And she’s, well. Aelwen’s never been soft on children and she’s not about to start, but Adaine’s a kid and she’s survived the crucible of their childhood—she is  _ going  _ to grow up. Kalvaxus couldn’t kill her, father couldn’t kill her, fuck it, Aelwen herself couldn’t even do it. The role isn’t going to some no-name elf if Aelwen has anything to say about it.

So, Aelwen’s going to need to sneak out of the old man’s protective custody and go kill the seer, which is a mess. Will be a mess. 

(It’s something beyond the tree at the edge of the woods, though, something to plan for that isn’t an odd series of dying leaves or a soup made of starlight. Something that isn’t driving herself to unconsciousness reaching for spells she  _ should  _ be able to cast by now. It’s something that she might not fail, the way she failed Adaine’s whole life and the Kalvaxus plan and even her parents, eventually.)

\---

You’d think it would be difficult, to kill divination specialists, but they die just like anyone else. The last Oracle got on a sinking ship, which seems like a much bigger and perhaps more predictable event than a dinner knife sliding through the fourth and fifth ribs. Took a lot of people down with the ship. Pretty irresponsible to not see that coming, if you ask Aelwen.

It’s the first time she’s felt powerful in ages, standing over Kyr’s body. She likes that feeling. She felt it creeping through the underbrush surrounding  _ yet another  _ tower, felt it coming upon the door that only spoke riddles and introducing it to an axe, felt it whispering a terrible joke and seeing Kyr overcome with laughter. 

It wouldn’t be so bad, would it, to leave and do something impactful, something that wrote her across the stars—she doesn’t, because when Adaine calls she wants to be back at the old man’s place. Surely there are other reasons; she doesn’t want to be under the thumb of another megalomaniac, she doesn’t want to take part in another pointless attempt at world domination. Surely it isn’t that she misses her brat sister. That she doesn’t want to watch her face fall for the thousandth time.

She steals all the notes in the study, mainly to make this seem like it has another motivation. She makes her way back to a disused teleportation circle that had been so thoughtfully depicted in a treatise on divination with the tomes and scraps of parchment wrapped up in a sheet and blacks herself out getting back to the fourth basement of the old man’s library.

She wakes up  _ not  _ slumped on the stone floor as she expected to, but sitting in the alcove she’d occupied on her first day in the place. There is a side table pulled up next to her chair with two candles already burning. Paper rustles and she turns to see Tel'amine sorting through the notes from Kyr’s tower.

“Did you know, an age ago when this place was new and not yet filled with youths, this was my favorite spot to ponder the phases of the moon?” he says, not looking up at her. Instead, he picks up another book, scans the first page, and sets it in a pile at his feet.

Aelwen’s heart rate kicks up. She goes from hazy to almost over-conscious in a split-second, smelling beeswax candles and feeling the drying blood on her sleeve, the lack of the knife that’s been on her person from the very first dinner. The moon is full outside and without the candles it would still probably be bright enough to read the papers. 

“It’s probably fairly damning, to be caught with a bloody knife and a bunch of personal documents that are not one’s own,” she says. “Do you feel particularly safe with me, Tel?”

He raises an eyebrow, still not looking at her. “The healers tell me that the reason your recovery goes so slowly is that you are perpetually re-exhausting yourself. They say that if you took your time you would already be quite formidable. The recovery of the young, it is like the time it takes the sun to cross the sky, or the time it takes my wards to alert me that a teleportation circle has been accessed. Fast.”

Adaine breathes in but it’s ragged, unsteady.  _ Weak,  _ she berates herself,  _ caught-out, you idiot. What’ll stop him from kicking you out right now, from turning you in to whoever handles justice here? Think. _

“Your grandson Fabian,” she starts, and  _ that  _ makes him look at her sharply, ancient gaze almost sending the words back down her throat. “Your grandson travels with my sister.”

Aelwen hates this, hates being afraid more than she hates anything in the world. She hadn’t realized how divided his attention was usually, corralling elven youths and watching a mote of dust drift through the air and recalling some fable. Right here, it’s all on her and it’s a frightening experience.

“Kyr was watching them. She’d caught Adaine before, and even if she didn’t outright attack she’s a  _ distraction  _ and they’re chasing the Nightmare King. They can’t afford to be distracted. He’s already going to live a shorter life, but she was a threat, she would have shortened it even further.”

That makes him blink, looking pained. “It is a terrible thing, to endanger the Oracle in such a way. And my grandson, my precious grandson, whose life is already the beat of a butterfly’s wing, whose death will pain myself and my daughter for all of our days... I cannot fault you for confronting a threat to them.”

“It’s not enough,” she says, and it’s the thoughts that have been simmering since their first dinner conversation, that have been building since Adaine mentioned Kyr, that might explain the other Aelwen’s shield weakly set over her sister. “Fallinel...  _ will  _ have a relationship with the Oracle.”

“Yes,” is all he says, concise for once.

“I can’t kill everyone in Fallinel,” she objects. “It’s too big, even for me. It’s not feasible.”

“Then you will need to consider another option, perhaps something even more challenging. You might convince her, as the river wears away at stones in but a short time, that it would be wise to return. You might go to war with Solace and demand her back as the price of peace; that happened with the Baronese in my own youth. You likely will not solve the problem this evening, however.”

Aelwen pushes herself into a standing position, feeling unsteady but not in her legs. Her head is reeling, trying to construct some sort of plan. “How will you explain the books?”

“They arrived in a gleam of moonlight, of course.” He nods to the moon outside the window and as she watches, a thinner volume appears on the side table. “There is a reason this was a favored haunt of mine.”

_ It’s too fucking late for this,  _ Aelwen thinks.  _ I need to trance.  _

The next morning she wakes and goes do the library’s history section, pulls every volume that makes mention of the Oracle and settles in to read. She forgets to check how many spells she can cast that day.

\---

Fallinel is not a country that has ever had a king. Fallinel is not a country that has ever had a  _ legal code.  _ The seven immortal dancers sing to the moon and the Oracle is meant to hear and interpret the echoes, or that’s a metaphor. Or it’s a motif. There are a  _ lot  _ of metaphors and motifs in the fucking sonnets and poems and songs that are her main sources in this research. The Oracle sees the future and preempts every crisis the country faces, or is supposed to. The Oracle guides the people through challenges or indicates the one who is chosen to do so. The Oracle sits around and strings words together and elves fall over themselves to put meaning to it.

The Oracle is Aelwen’s sister, and she wants to be free of Fallinel. Fallinel  _ will  _ have a relationship with the Oracle. One of these things has to change, and going by Adaine’s reaction the one time Aelwen floated the idea, it’s not going to be the first one. 

Aelwen leans back against the tree at the edge of Lomenelda lands and looks over her notes again like the excerpts and page-references will reveal something new. She has a list of possibilities, which range from  _ handle each attempt as it happens  _ to  _ find a way to wrest control of the country away from the immortal dancers,  _ and wresting control seems to be the more appealing option of the two, but it needs a crisis to shake faith in the leadership and on her own Aelwen isn’t sure she can trick Fallinel into thinking there’s a crisis. Essentially, she has nothing. 

When Adaine calls she lets her sister talk without interruption for an unprecedented amount of time and wants to reach through the image somehow, wants to grab her shoulders and  _ shake  _ her. The elves will kill her, they will kill her if she does not at least  _ pretend  _ to accept her role, what is this girl  _ doing  _ hunting the Nightmare King when she could be killed by a Fallinel black ops squad at any moment. 

At the end of an explanation for her black eye that involves a Tabaxi and an army of bone puppets (very different from an army of skeletons, Adaine assures her) her sister looks above Aelwen’s head and frowns slightly. “Is your tree alright?”

Adaine’s been calling it  _ your tree  _ ever since Aelwen mentioned measuring the leaves. She thinks Aelwen gained an interest in botany, for some reason. Perhaps it helps her trance peacefully, to imagine that her sister is getting interested in wholesome things like plant growth. 

“Of course it is,” Aelwen sighs, turning around to look up at the branches. What she sees stops her still.

At the tops of the tallest branches, leaves have turned all the way brown and dry and dead. A strong gust of wind blows through and one of them gives up the ghost, pulling free of the wood and floating down, down, to land right in the open pages of Aelwen’s notes. 

This is not supposed to happen. The trees here are always green, unless the elves want them to change and flower. They don’t... the leaves don’t fall. There is no autumn, because there is no winter, because time is as confusing as possible. Tel'amine had said as much, though using different phrasing. And it’s spring, anyway, even here it’s spring.

It looks ominous, with the odd angle of the sun in the sky. It looks dangerous. 

Aelwen turns back to her sister and rolls her eyes. “It’s fine, the trees do that here. Don’t die,” and she dispels the illusion.

She closes her notes so carefully, so as not to crush the leaf. And she  _ runs  _ for the library.

\---

They do several tests on the leaf, and on the tree itself when she leads Tel'amine and Vanlariel and two other adults to it. It’s time, something about time magic, and Aelwen remembers clicking a watch button at a party what feels like forever ago.  _ The most powerful magic in the world,  _ Arthur Aguefort claimed,  _ is chronomancy.  _

The same Arthur Aguefort who dragged the sun out of place and attacked Fallinel with a few hundred terra cotta soldiers not long ago. The Arthur Aguefort who the Lomenelda cannot hide their distaste for, who Kyr had two different assassination plans drawn up for in her personal notes. The Arthur Aguefort who taught Adaine her new Sending spell.

Now that they know to look for it Tel’amine spreads out a map of Fallinel and they work on the parchment for a day, weaving a ward that detects magic on the land over it, Aelwen focusing on the base construction of the spell and other elves drifting in and out to tweak it to show the various schools. None of the youths are allowed in the room and as the unnaturally short day ends the moonlight hits the parchment and they can see it in gray wisps like the edges of a ripple in a pond; inconsistently placed but widely spread across the country of Fallinel are wells of chronomantic energy.

In the ground, in the trees and wind and sky they fester. Time, age,  _ wear.  _ Tel’amine looks grave.

“This is a deeply concerning result,” he says. “I do not think we have ever faced such a challenge, not in the time of my daughters nor the time of my parents nor in the time of the seven immortal dancers who exist on the spindle and sing to the phases of the moon. We are high elves; time does not move  _ us.” _

And Aelwen sees the edge of it, the sketch of a plan that requires a crisis to shake faith in the leadership of Fallinel, that strings together remembered verses of the Oracle designating a leader to guide the country through a crisis with Adaine’s frustrated sigh when she spoke about Kyr. It must be horrifying, she registers, for the Lomenelda to see this. It must seem like their world is ending; they have no idea how to face time that has any weight. Some of them have never seen a season change.

Aelwen sees an opportunity.

“We need someone who understands time, then, to help us move it back. And I don’t mean Aguefort,” she says, forestalling the first objections. “Of course he can’t be permitted to cross our borders. My sister Adaine is his student, though, and we talk. And I’ve used chronomancy to my advantage before; there are ways to direct it.”

Tel’amine looks at her, piercing. “Are you saying that you have a way to combat this...  _ chreunomaancie?” _

“I’m saying I have some ideas.”

\---

It is not an instant ticket into the high tier of high-elf society, as helpful as the support of the Lomenelda is. Aelwen can’t push herself too far behind closed doors; she’s still the disgraced daughter of a disgraced ambassador, after all, and the upper crust can’t bear to associate with her. They hold grudges against her for their tense relationship with Solace, a valued trade partner, or hold grudges for a comment one of her parents made at a party a hundred years ago, or hold a grudge that the Oracle is not in Fallinel to guide them through this crisis. So, a three-step plan.

When Adaine next calls, part of her hair is singed and she’s saying something about fae that Aelwen has to pretend not to listen to despite how very interesting it is. She makes sure to sit with her back to a wall so that Adaine doesn’t see the warded guide to time spots in Fallinel and the piles of diplomatic correspondence that Aelwen’s reading all of and the big file of blackmail she’s compiled from Kyr’s notes and conversations with the youths about their families.

“How are things with you?” her sister asks cautiously, and Aelwen waves a hand dismissively. 

“More of the same, honestly. There’s been a bit of trouble here but not to do with your crowned enemy. Want me to handle it?” And she needs Adaine to say yes to this, needs it for the plan to work so Adaine can grow up, needs it so she doesn’t fail the one person left to fail. 

“Like a problem with the song grapes, or something?  _ Sure,  _ I don’t want to come back and deal with anything. Go nuts. I’m glad to see—well, I mean, how are your spells?”

Aelwen stops for a moment to think of the last time she really pushed it. Days ago, now, and she feels... stronger. Better, somehow. 

“Good enough to handle this, at least,” she says, and her smile barely feels twisted at all.

\---

Step One, underlined in her notes, simply says “Make the Claim.”

_ One must wonder,  _ she writes on a fresh piece of paper after Adaine has to go,  _ how the wells of Time might affect the Lifespan of Elves. Will we find ourselves Faltering on the road of Time? Will our pursuit of great Understandings and Truths suffer? Will our Art and Music lose both audience and creator, as both are subsumed by the uncaring, undiscriminating Time? Will the Songs of the Seven Dancers reach the Moon in the sky any longer? Are we now to be the dewdrop facing the brutal Dawn, which burns us away from the land? _

_ The Oracle Herself has instructed this Humble Writer to guide the Elves through this time of Crisis; let it be known that this Writer will submit to all Truth Magics and give the same Testimony. _

She seals it with plain wax, no elaborate seal. She is the disgraced daughter of a disgraced family; it would not do to be extravagant. They want humble and they’ll want pliable, reliant on the advice of established families. Those are the most beloved leaders in the poems—the ones who come to the house of a great family seeking assistance on their journey. The questions in her announcement will stoke their fears—will you lose the things you love, she is asking, will you lose your very lives? It is urgent that you listen to me.

It fits the narrative that she’s already been a guest of the Lomenelda. It adds  _ something  _ that she’s Adaine’s sister, but Aelwen isn’t sure yet if that something will be an advantage or not.

\---

Step Two is slightly more nuanced. Though all she has written is “Reputation,” it is not easy to build that without any nearby battlefields to be victorious over. Aelwen is beginning to think this might be possible without starting a war, which makes it simpler, at least a little.

She doesn’t go to the nearest great battle, or to the shrine of an ancient sage or another place like that. No, Aelwen goes to meet with one of the eternal poets who sit beside the lake of glass and shadow and asks them to write an exploration of time. A song, a cycle, an epic, it doesn’t matter. Just something about time. Because any exploration of time is exploration of death, and the elves of Fallinel are shit-scared of death.

Aelwen is the patron of this work; her name is praised for the first six stanzas. ( _ Adaine do you have five thousand gold I could borrow, I’m getting into poetry _ had been a rough conversation.) 

She is radiant on the page, blessed with an idea that will save Fallinel, chosen by the Oracle to guide them through this crisis. On the nights she comes out of an uneasy trance, phantom pains that she doesn’t recognize wracking her body, she recites the dedication over and over again.

She honestly doesn’t discuss the problem too much with most people; she’s not looking to start a revolution. And that’s what you get, the history of Solace indicates, the stories Adaine tells her of Leviathan indicate, if you get a whole group of angry, frightened people together. Aelwen doesn’t even really want to change the system; it’s terrible and dysfunctional and useful in its terrible dysfunction. She doesn’t need people to  _ overthrow  _ the immortal dancers, that had been the option of what to do without a crisis and that plan had  _ many  _ more steps. She just needs people to associate her name with something that evokes a strong enough emotion; whether that’s a fear of dying or a hope that she can save them is immaterial.

It helps that a few of the youths in Tel’amine’s care have recently become adults and know her as someone who recovered from grievous injury to return fully competent. They remember her discovery of the time problem because they were  _ there  _ when it happened, and none of them were there to see her get arrested or break under torture. If she isn’t a source of strength, at least she’s a goddamn inspiration. 

\---

Step Three is “Solve the Problem.” There’s a trick to this, too. She can’t do it too quickly, because if she’s not established before the problem is solved she’ll be relegated to being a hero of the age, and that’s just not fucking enough. Aelwen isn’t doing this to be the subject of songs, she’s doing it because  _ Adaine is going to grow up  _ and  _ Fallinel will have a relationship with the Oracle  _ can’t be allowed to be in conflict. 

She also can’t do it too quickly because, well, she has no plan for clearing out the chronomancy. She doesn’t know what needs to be done. The next time she manages to visit her tree it’s clearly just dying, bare-branched and beginning to buckle under its own weight. She leans against it anyway, wondering what can be done. This isn’t like clicking the button on a watch, it isn’t even like freeing a dragon from his own body and raising him up as an emperor.

It’s impossible, is what it is, and Aelwen can’t do it. Even Aguefort doesn’t seem to be able to fix the sun, and this is a much bigger problem than the sun being in the wrong place. And Aelwen isn’t Aguefort, and she’s not the Oracle, either. She’s just a mess, falling apart and needing Adaine to save her while never doing things the other way around, she’s just someone who agreed to stay in a place she knew nothing about because she wanted to avoid her sister so badly, because she couldn’t stand to be looked at so earnestly. If wasn’t pathetic... then hesitating while Adaine was walking away certainly was.

All she could do was  _ not remember making  _ a weak shield around Adaine, which wasn’t even  _ useful in that situation— _

And isn’t that a thought. Isn’t that something. 

Aelwen places her hands flat against the trunk of the tree and begins weaving, abjuration over abjuration, up the wavering wood and over the branches. The shield gleams, deep orange and honey-gold, and she can feel something in the air  _ shifting,  _ just a little. 

Right now, though, just a little is exactly what she needs.

She proposes the idea to the powerful,  _ why not create a shield, at least over your palaces and gardens and holy places.  _ And damn every single one of them, they do. The shield is a magnificent thing, for all that it’s a patchwork, full of gaps. It takes the full concentration of dozens of wizards to establish it over any one area, and then they have to tie it to a source of power or it’ll just begin to dissipate. There are elemental batteries and feedback loops, there’re proposals about harnessing faraway movements of the tides to keep the shield up, ideas about feeding it the currents of the wind.

And every night before she trances, wherever she is in Fallinel, Aelwen reaches for the edge of the magnificent thing and  _ pokes  _ and  _ wears  _ and  _ unravels  _ it. And the magic listens to her, it knows her, and the weight of the time its holding back is enough to make sure that the shield always seems like a temporary measure. It is not a thing that will be able to hold forever, and forever is the only kind of solution the elves can accept.

\---

When Adaine calls and says they’ve killed the Nightmare King, for good this time, Aelwen smiles and pretends that it isn’t relief that sweeps over her. Some of it must somehow show on her face, though, because Adaine smiles and holds up that frog of hers and says, “You’ve got to admit that he’s more than adequate now.” 

Aelwen does not remember ever calling Boggy adequate, but she nods anyway. 

“You’ll return to Solace now, I suppose?” she asks.  _ I miss you,  _ she doesn’t say. She’s got no right to be missing Adaine. They aren’t that kind of family, after all. 

“Yes. I—Aelwen, maybe someday in the future, you could visit?”

Aelwen is stunned at this question. She wants to throw a barb back instinctively but it dies on the tip of her tongue. “Maybe someday,” she manages, and Adaine’s smile is a fragile thing before she dispels the illusion. 

Aelwen, among poets and artists and scholars and hating every moment of it, except for the moments that she likes, catches wind of another plot to get a new Oracle. The Nightmare King is dead, which is overall a positive thing. No one is arguing against that. There are, however, certain forces that would now see a malleable Oracle returned to Fallinel’s borders.

This time, Aelwen kills a general. She doesn’t have to sneak out of anywhere, just comes to his manor to discuss the strength of the shield that sits spelled invisible in the air all around them. She commiserates with him about how much  _ easier  _ it would be if the Oracle herself could be here in this trying time, rather than simply choosing a representative.

_ (Why  _ people think Adaine would be easier to liaise with about abjuration Aelwen has no idea, but they’re always saying it and she’s learned to nod.)

Between one sip of tea and the next, bent over a map of the surrounding area, Aelwen  _ tears  _ at a single thread of a hundred hundred thousand bits of magic, and the chronomantic energy explodes down onto the general. He ages a hundred years the first second, two hundred the second, doubling and doubling still. Aelwen screams high and frightened and her hands glow with magic as she works to stem the flow of it. Guards and servants clatter in quickly and see her heave upward, a lock of her hair falling into the flood of gray light. When she pulls back there’s a streak of pure white winding through the rest of her hair, brittle and dry as bone. The general, tragically, is shriveled and dead.

It is the first time a high elf has died of old age in living memory. It is clear that they need to take more action.

\---

On the twenty-fifth day of the thirty-six-hundredth cycle since Fallinel’s last leader acknowledged by the Oracle was killed in glorious combat, Aelwen Abernat decrees that while she would not presume to trespass on the holy workings of Fallinel government, she is proud to accept her appointment and guard her people through their time of crisis. When the cloak of amber beads and the wisdom of the ages is clasped around her shoulders, she keeps a grave expression. When the ceremonial sword which struck a thousand dissidents is placed in her open hands she keeps her composure, even as it slices into her palms. When the chain of office, crafted from a metal found nowhere but on the elemental plane of air and refined for fifteen-hundred years before its forging process can begin, settles against her chest—well, then she smiles.

There are a great many fluttering silk banners woven with stars and a great deal of food from the orchards on the highest mountains and the richest fields, distributed to the crowd on platters of silver and song. It’s a party, a celebration, but elves often glance toward the sky wondering if they’re in danger. Aelwen slips away at the earliest opportunity.

The first map, the one she made with the Lomenelda, is spread across a table in the room that will be her study. Aelwen cannot give into the stagnancy that permeates Fallinel now. Next to the map is an order that she signs and stamps with her seal of office, calling any pursuit of the Oracle both heretical and treasonous. 

Adaine is going to grow up. Fallinel will have a relationship with the Oracle. Aelwen is the solution to both. She will need to see her sister somewhere, to really hash it out, to explain that she hasn’t taken over the country on a whim. She will need to see her sister to ask her to either smuggle Aguefort into the country or steal some books from him. She will need to, she will need— 

Aelwen is not sure how to soften; she is not sure that she can. She is lightning, is a window breaking, is a knife and a modified memory. But her sister is going to grow up.

_ Adaine is going to grow up, I am going to see it.  _

**Author's Note:**

> title is from ‘Hole in the Silver Lining’ by The Crane Wives, who i guess are my Abernat Playlist Band. i’m not sure this is a redemption story; Aelwen doesn’t decide to make the world a better place, she decides to make it a place that Adaine can live in. she definitely didn’t climb up the alignment chart into lawful good or something. but i kinda feel like... *insert Wild Geese by Mary Oliver here*, you know? didn’t put too much of the initial sister conversation in because whatever siobhan and brennan do this week is gonna be So Much More than anything i would come up with haha. can’t remember if it was a pine forest in canon but it’s not one now lol.  
> If there is a moment where it seems like i mixed up their names, i probably did actually mess up please let me know because editing this fic was a lil bit of a nightmare  
> Leave a comment! i know this story is kind of out there but i had a good time writing it and i hope it was a good read :)


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